Yeah, it’s totally true

WiFi4EU is a 120 million euro scheme that promises to provide free Wi-Fi connectivity for citizens and visitors in public spaces including parks, squares, public buildings, libraries, health centres, and museums everywhere in Europe.

The aim is focused to benefit both residents and visitors of thousands of local communities across the EU with at least 6,000 to 8,000 local communities by 2020.

Everyone benefiting from connectivity means that it should not matter where you live or how much you earn. So we propose today to equip every European village and every city with free wireless internet access around the main centres of public life by 2020.Jean-Claude Juncker – State of the Union speech, September 2016

The beneficiaries have to pay for the connectivity (internet subscription) and maintenance in good order of the equipment for 3 years, while the EU with this scheme will support the installation of Wi-Fi equipment in the centres of community life.

After completing the appropriate online applications procedures, the projects will be selected on a first-come, first-serve basis. The first call for projects is expected to be launched towards the end of 2017 or early 2018.

Kyriakos is one of the Co-Founders of Badfive.com. He's obsessed with programming, design and simplicity in tech world. As an entrepreneur he believes that running different innovative project ideas is the best thing in his life. "Stay hungry, Stay foolish" is his favourite quote.

2 Comments

“WiFi4EU is a 120 million euro scheme that promises to provide free Wi-Fi connectivity for citizens and visitors in public spaces including parks, squares, public buildings, libraries, health centres, and museums everywhere in Europe.”

Given the first sentence your headline is highly deceptive. Free WiFi to public spaces is pretty routine many public and private entities already do this in many western countries.

EU is trying to cover more public spaces in areas and countries that previously was difficult for them to invest on such things. EU is now investing on those technologies in order to offer people not only free internet, but also high speed and quality web services.